ANIMAL PHOTOS © ISTOCKPHOTO.COM: MALLARD—PAUL TESSIER; NEWT, HERON, DART FROG—GLOBALIP; LIZARDS—KIMWHIT92; FROG—ANTAGAIN; SPOONBILL—KEN CANNING. CAECILIAN—© KAMNUAN/SHUTTERSTOCKFew experiences have hit me harder than walking through a bat graveyard. In March 2014, my colleagues and I were doing research in a pair of underground mines in northern Illinois. Five months earlier, these mines had been home to more than 28,000 bats of five species, but on that day they were tombs, littered with lifeless, fungus-covered bodies. The bats’ skin was dry and flaking; their bodies, which hung from the walls near the entrances, were so emaciated that their bones nearly protruded through their skin.
When we surveyed the area, we found just 1,023 live bats in one mine and 5,237 in the other. More than 75 percent of the bats were dead from white-nose syndrome, an emerging disease caused by the fungal pathogen Pseudogymnoascus destructans. We left Illinois the next day emotionally spent. Our team, along with the broader community of biologists who study this disease, has been searching for ways to prevent this pattern of devastation from repeating itself. Sadly, white-nose syndrome continues to ravage bat populations as it spreads westward across the continent. (See map here.) Over the past seven years, the disease has killed millions of bats in 25 states and five Canadian provinces, making it one of the most devastating diseases to affect mammals in ...
